


sweetest devotion

by CreoleSiren



Category: Black Panther (2018), MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Namor the Sub-Mariner (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: African Folklore, F/M, Gen, Mermaids, Multi, water mama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-01-23 15:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21322750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreoleSiren/pseuds/CreoleSiren
Summary: she saved him before, it seemed only right that she would be here now. in his final death.(seven-part story)
Kudos: 3





	1. genesis

He is a cat and she is a fish. 

An oversimplification of what they were, T’Challa knows, but it’s an apt analogy nonetheless. They could never co-exist as lovers. As separate species and peoples, with mutual respect between them but he is a cat, a sleek, powerful panther roaming savannahs and she is a fish, cutting and slicing through the blue sea. T’Challa knows he has always loved her, and will, despite it all, forever need her. He remembers seeing her for the first time when she saved his life – she looked the same always. Eternal daughter of _Mami_ _Wata_, her skin tawny and brown her eyes rich and onyx, wide with panic as she gurgles at him – she had forgotten he was a land boy, incapable of the language of water maids. She appears like a dream, seashells, and diamonds in the currents of her black curls. 

(The audible hiss of snakes surround them and shockingly he does not feel fearful.)

“Mami Wata,” he had choked out as she laid him on the sandy shore not far from where he was with his friends. The faint calls of the Dora are in the distance for him. 

Something clicks with her, her gills disappear into the skin of her neck and she speaks to him. “Be careful son of Bast.”

Then she disappeared into the water, the hiss of her snakes goes with her and the Dora found him shortly after. 

This was not the last time he meets her, and he remembers each. They are so utterly a part of him as his skin, eyes, and atoms are. She is essential to his survival. 

He wonders if this count, it is hours after the funeral for his best friend and all have left his side – though he is sure Okoye is lurking in the shadows, which was understandable. As expected, she looks exactly as she did the first time he met her and the last time, before he left for Oxford. There are still diamonds in her hair falling from her like water droplets and her eyes are still onyx and innocent. He is physically older than her, but she has lived more lives than he could comprehend. She is naked. Curls cover her breasts and crouch as she transforms before him into what she termed her more palpable form. 

She does not know shame in her nakedness and opens her arms to him. “I have missed you, _ umhlobo _.”

T’Challa hugs her, her wet form against his black mourning clothes do not discourage him from inhaling the scent of rivers and lakes on her. To call him a friend for her people is a grand honor, or so she had told him years ago. “So have I,_ umhlobo. _”

They part, and he removes his long, black coat to cover her. She laughs and buttons it. “You are still shy around naked women? I thought you would have grown out of it by now, _ umhlobo. _”

He clicks his tongue. “You take delight in teasing me.”

She smiles at him with her human teeth, dull, white and as beautiful as she was. “Because you are so easily teased!” 

“You are childish for such an old woman.” He quips, with a subtle brow rise.

The water maid shoved his shoulder. “Have respect for your elders' boy!” she says jokingly before her face becoming stony and eyes wet with compassion. “I’m sorry about your father; and your cousin and your best friend – your brother. I’m sorry you keep losing people you love.” She says, taking his hands into her own. Smaller, delicate palms cup his large hands.

T’Challa, takes hers, surrounding the same hands with him before raising them to his lips. The lick of his lips afterward would be ignored by her – but he relishes in the slight taste of her skin. One he has missed the decadent taste that was solely her own, like ripened mangoes from the trees that lined the district of the River Tribe. He wants to taste her forever, not remember the past or dead men that haunt yesterday. “Thank you.”

“There’s something coming, T’Challa.” She warns, and all thoughts of tasting what was once _ his _ disappear. “The earth beneath the water is _ weeping _.”

“Whatever it is.” He starts, staring at her hands. He feels powerful with her so near to him. “It has brought you here?”

She moves to cup his face, bringing it to her face – a rare emotion swimming in her eyes with a familiar one. There is panic but there is also determination. “It will bring _ all _ here.” She says planting her lips on his. Soft, wet, plumb flesh – she has always been the sweetest fruit. 

He was wrong. She was not a fish, she was the sea. And none can truly battle the sea and live. T’Challa was no exception. 


	2. 01

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kuliltu - basically mermaids

T’Challa looks at his country from the newly built palace study room, how it rebuilt itself from the ruins of the titan. Now, to face the news of another threat; an unknown one, a whisper of a phantom from a friend that never deceived him before. Could they face another threat like Thanos? Wakanda had been all but obliterated. They had been refugees, shells of their former glory but in the next few years they worked hard to rebuild and be as they were. 

“My king,” an emotionless voice called from the door – the king did not have to turn to know who it was. “Shuri requests an audience with you. She said she’s tried calling your beads but has received no response.”

His eye catches the beads left on his nightstand and reaches to place them on his wrists. “Thank you, Aneka. I will go to her now.” 

The Dora nods, but says nothing, waiting to escort him. 

T’Challa knows she’s in pain, he also knows she won’t say anything. They have lost so many in the past few years. Far be it from her to admit her pain. It does not take long for them to arrive at Shuri’s lab; his sister is the one unchanged force through all of this. Something he is immensely grateful for. A grin, childish and playful, breaks out on her face when she sees him. It makes his heart swell, his little sister is as young as she tries to convince herself she is not. 

“Brother!” she shrieks excitedly, gangly and eighteen. “I have managed to create a formula that may be able to give up the same effect of the heart shaped herb.”

T’Challa tilts his head, intrigued. “And how have you done this? Without the soulstone in our possession?” The stones were destroyed after Thanos, obliterated as so many other things were in the war. 

Shuri gives him a challenging look. “I have my ways, brother.” 

The lithe woman turns, expecting him to follow as she goes to one of her workstations. The King follows his sister with tentative steps, what he finds surprises him. In a transparent incubator, was the tiniest fragment of the soulstone, purple and effervescent, less than the pinky nail of a newborn. A cord connects it to a larger incubator, where tiny buds grow, their vibrant, neon lavender color familiar and calling the hum of the panther beneath his skin. 

Then, he sees the stone and he recalls the powers that came with it. The destruction, the death, an apocalyptic standard of doom – all from a stone – collection of stones but before him is a fragment that still exists. His sister, who still possesses an untainted light which he envies, is beaming at him from the corner of his eye and cannot fathom the depth of what she holds. 

“This is our legacy, brother,” she stays, breaking his train of thought abruptly. 

_ No _ , T’Challa thinks,  _ this is danger _ . That is a dark cowardly part of him that resembles reasoning. T’Challa has never been a coward, so he doesn’t think he’d start now. “Shuri,” he starts, slowly, sounding tired. “Who knows of this stone? Besides yourself and I.”

His little sister blinks at him before answering. A second is all it takes for the weight of his question to be processed. “No one. I secured it myself after visiting the battleground last year and have been working on recreating the herb since then.”

“Keep it that way.” T’Challa says, in the tone of a king. “This will be our nation’s most valuable secret.”

Regret seeps into his bones as he turns, thinking that speck of a stone will cause trouble for him later. 

The Dora who escorted him is still trailing behind him as he makes his way out of the palace. Lately, there is one always shadowing him. Though he is King, his mother is still an undeniable force not to be reckoned with. His friend’s home is modest. From the outside it is like any other home belonging to the Border tribe. T’Challa, since his travels, has appreciated Wakandan architecture more than ever. It’s seamlessly blend with the past and present; he passes his kimoyo beads over the identification slot. 

The door opened with a silent  _ swish _ . 

The King twisted his head to the side before speaking in a soft, not unkind tone. “Wait here.”

The Dora does not look insulted, giving her king a sharp nod as he enters the home of his general. A smile, genuine, bright and wide spreads across his face – giving him the look of a boy at the sight that greets him; Okoye rocking his godson to sleep. On the general’s face is a look of tenderness that has become so utterly her since the birth of child. Gently, she placed the seven-month-old into the cradle Shuri designed for her as a gift. The general brushed her beads over the side of the cradle, securing her only child in a cocoon of silence. 

A sigh of relief falls from her lips before she faces the warm gaze of her friend. “It has been too long, my friend.”

“Indeed it has,” the King says with a grin, they salute each other before sitting on the wooden stools beside the cradle. “I am sorry I did not come sooner, especially after W’Kabi’s…”

The general raised a hand, waving him off. “I have made my peace with W’Kabi the day he betrayed you.”

Her loyalty is unfailing but T’Challa of all people understands complex love. He grabbed her hand, a comforting gesture that makes her squeeze her eyes. “It is okay to admit you still love him. I never stopped caring for my friend; I know you never stopped caring for your husband.”

A watery smirk makes it to her face. “I have made my peace, my King.”

“I am your friend before I am your King, Okoye.” He says, passing his thumb under her eye – the faintest droplet of a tear on the tip of his finger. “Always remember that.”

Shaking her head again before him is the general of the Wakandan army and not his friend – the personalities change like a dress. “Tell me, have you come for more reasons than opening closed wounds?”

“I do not believe that wound have even begun bare a scab,” he says in a challenging tone before sighing and speaking again. “Word has come to me by a reliable source that danger is ahead. Powerful danger.”

Okoye furrowed her brows. “The mad titan?”

The King shook his head. “No. This is something else, something that we may have never seen before.”

“What is it exactly?” she questions. “Or do you not know?”

“I don’t.” he admits. “But the source is reliable –”

“Was it Nakia?”

“ _ No _ .” 

“So, you’ve come to tell me about some unknown evil which may not even be real because someone told you?” 

T’Challa shakes his head; he bites out in an impatient growl. “There is no reason to doubt the source.”

Okoye gives him a leveled look; it is not often he reminds her that he is King. “If you say so, my King.” She pauses, eyeing him critically. “Now what would you suppose us to do?”

“We  _ plan _ .” He says simply. “Or has motherhood lured you away from your post general?”

The mother grins at him. “My King, I do believe motherhood has made me an even better general for your liege’s and Wakanda’s service.” She clicks her tongue. “We start by increasing training and recruitment.”

At the back of his mind, a traitorous voice that sounds like  ** _her own_ ** saying; “ _ Maybe _ .” Maybe they can do this – Wakanda is strong. He just has to be as well. 

It’s much later in the day when it is no longer considered the day and is coated by the black of the night. Stars and secrets are scattered along the sky. The hushed whisper of nature echoing about. In the open space of his personal gardens and lakes, T’Challa sits on the green grass and runs his hands over the white daisies – weeds, no matter how pretty they were, were simply  _ pests _ . He grips them in large clumps, before pulling them from the earth. 

On his wrist, his beads sound off. 

T’Challa furrows his brows in frustration because the King not even allowed a moment’s peace? Heavy is the head that wears the crown, indeed, he snarks internally before answering the call. The face of a woman he once loved deeply appears Nakia is as fierce as ever, even in western clothing. 

“My King,” she greets with a nod. 

“What is it, Nakia?” he asks, concern seeping into his voice. 

She looks at him with an unreadable look. “You know why I am calling you, T’Challa. He was my friend too.”

“I know, Nakia,” he doesn’t mean to say her name in a soft, broken way, but it’s the way he has grown accustomed to. “I know you have more important things to do.”

The holographic image shakes its head. “I am a Wardog on a wild goose chase your king –”

“You are on orders.” steel in his voice reminds her that she is not the King -  _ he  _ is. 

Brown eyes wide and pleasant mouth stern, she answers him before shutting the call off. “As you wish,” T’Challa does not know what cuts more. Her tone or her words.

He can not afford to think of that, at least not now. All he can think of is the earth beneath him and how it is changing. A new enemy - a stranger, an evil that shook her. If the strangeness had not terrified him, but the idea that anything could frighten her he trembled to think of it. As T’Challa leaned back, the body falling heavy onto the moisture of the ground. 

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Ø

He would stand for it no longer, a king of the sea - what use is a title if he can not rescue his people? 

There is so much death that surrounds him. Every time Namor opens his eyes, he sees death and poison around his people. His skin burns and the world around him looks as if doom had spat upon it. What kingdom is there to rule? The land has poisoned and made toxic his world, that only in the black depths can he find shallow peace. His world weeps and its caretakers are weak. 

Namor is no _kuliltu_, he shares no love for humanity. How can he love something that clearly hates him? What else is there to describe the seas rich with death? The sludge and refuse that the ocean is forced to swallow. 

It is time for _them_ to swallow _his_ revenge now.


End file.
